"No fair-minded man believes that Smith, Napier and
Williams, Conyers and McClellan, have had impartial
treatment. The government itself has been remiss in
not throwing about them the protection of its authority.
Had these colored boys been students at St. Cyr, in
Paris, or Woolwich, in England, under despotic France
and aristocratic England, they would have been treated
with that courtesy and justice of which the average
white American has no idea. The South once ruled West
Point, much to its detriment in loyalty, however much,
by reason of sending boys more than prepared. It
dominated in scholarship. It seeks to recover the lost
ground, and rightly fears to meet on terms of equality
in the camp the sons of fathers to whom it refused
quarter in the war and butchered in cold blood at Fort
Pillow. We cannot expect the sons to forget the lessons
of the sires; but we have a right to demand from the
general government the rooting out of all snobbery at
West Point, whether it is of that kind which sends poor
white boys to Coventry, because they haven't a family
name or wealth, or whether it be that smallest, meanest,
and shallowest of all aristocracies--the one founded
upon color.
"If the government is not able to root out these
unrepublican seeds in these hot-beds of disloyalty
and snobbery, then let Congress shut up the useless
and expensive appendages and educate its officers at
the colleges of the country, where they may learn
lessons in true republican equality and nationality.
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